Good evening ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another edition of The Front Page. Yogg-Saron is dead, and by extension, all bosses leading up to him as well.

Before this post gets too wild, I'll start with something serious. I'd like to dedicate this server first kill of Yogg-Saron to Foxery, formerly one of our core raiders. He was involved in a fatal motorcycle accident one week prior. He will be greatly missed.

That said, I have a feeling that employers are secretly GOOGLING my name whenever I apply for a job. Though I try to rig the google search results, this front page inevitably appears somewhere near the top. Some have suggested maybe toning down the content of this front page, to make it a higher class of humor if you will, to perhaps make this here operation at least APPEAR a little more professional and legitimate.

Personally, I'd rather keep it as is and let them have a better time reading it. Because you see, people who don't play the game and raid will never see it the same way. They will never be able to understand the denial or realization in the voice of someone that just died to rockets. Or appreciate the wonderful excuses we hear when one of our special cadets goes afk in the 3 seconds between a ready check and a pull. You see, from the outside it looks a lot like a small confused male child sitting in a corner having a tea party.

When I was younger, say 4 years old, I was with my grandparents visiting some friends of theirs. These friends had a girl my age, and my grandparents decided to get her a tea set as a gift. Now, so that I would not feel particularly left out, they got me something too: I don't recall exactly what it was since I allegedly threw it at a wall after getting it, but more than likely it was a racecar.

Now I personally remember the details of this story very very vaguely, but living witnesses have described it as such: shortly after the two presents were opened I forcibly broke the racecar or whatever was given to me, punched the little girl in the head, and then proceeded to take the tea set to a corner where I had a tea party. Attempts to approach me during this time were met with wild screaming and throwing of various objects.

So what I'm trying to say is, raiding is basically a tea party over the internet.

Overall Ulduar is a refreshing experience after running Naxx repeatedly for a few months. In Naxx the boss would usually have to find a way to kill every single raid member to truly wipe the raid, since about 3 out of 25 people could reasonably salvage a bad attempt. Here the punishment for bringing squid tends to be far harsher. And once again the hardest encounters are those that make you fight against your fellow players. Like the man that splits your raid into two parts and puts one of them into a tunnel. Arguably the easiest fight in the instance, but I don't think we've yet had an attempt where everyone that was supposed to be in the tunnel actually ended up there. The best we can possibly hope for is for the stupidity to balance itself out, meaning that those who stayed outside are balanced by an equal amount of "stowaways" looking to visit Egypt.

The later, more difficult encounters are essentially the continuation of Loken's legacy. In addition to this Ulduar is also a place of great mystery - beneath the circular Walkway of the Watchers sits a suspiciously empty room, at the center of which is the woman from Scholomance, whose purpose is at first not entirely apparent. And as such, to combat these new foes, a very special kind of weapon needed to be brought in.

From the sand-beaten flats of Khloo-poon, the land of ents and Wickerwhims, comes a man in a tattered robe, leaning on a cane. Around his belt hang containers of various sizes and descriptions, filled with exotic wines and spirits that grant him tremendous power. On his back hangs a flag with a picture of a cat. It is said that in the slurred speech of this powerful warlock lie the answers to the secrets of the Woman and Loken.

And then of course there's Yogg-Saron himself, a well-tuned encounter with interesting mechanics, the best being where you fuck up and the whole raid turns into anteaters. If you weren't one of the very privileged few that got a chance to go insane on that fight, believe me, you'll know when you see it.

And so, it's off to hardmodes for us. Well, I guess before then we'll probably have to kill Yogg-Saron again, which seems a little tenuous as of this writing. My theory is that the excitement of a first kill was too much for some people, and a number of individuals are still missing. Gleppars for instance went on what was described as a "cock-sucking trip" to LA, and there are theories that Eggbeater got lost at a gay bar. Well, actually FOUND at a gay bar, if you know what I mean. But back on topic: I'm not sure what the updates will look like for the less interesting hard modes, but in any case I'll keep a checklist: